It's Raining, It's Pouring

"It's Raining, It's Pouring"
Roud #16814
Song
Written USA
Published 1939
Form Nursery rhyme
Writer(s) Traditional
Language English

"It's Raining, It's Pouring" is an English language nursery rhyme and children's song. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 16814.

Lyrics

Common, modern versions include:

It's raining; it's pouring.
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed and bumped his head,
And didnt wake up the next morning.


It's raining; it's pouring.
The old woman is snoring.
She went to bed and bumped her head,
And she couldn't get up in the morning.


It's raining; it's pouring.
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed and bumped his head,
And he couldn't get up in the morning.


It's raining; it's pouring.
The old woman is snoring.
She went to bed and bumped her head,
And she couldn't get up in the morning.


It's raining; it's pouring.
The children are snoring.
They went to bed and bumped their heads,
And they couldn't get up in the morning.

[1]

Origins and interpretation

The first two lines of this rhyme can be found in The Little Mother Goose, published in the US in 1912.[2] The melody most often associated with it is the same as "A Tisket, A Tasket", which is in the public domain. The earliest known audio recording of the song was made in 1939 in New York by anthropologist and folklorist Herbert Halpert and is held in the Library of Congress.[3] It was noted in 1939 in New York by Charles Ives (1874–1954) and a version of it was copyrighted in 1944 by Freda Selicoff.[4]

It has been suggested that the verse is a "classic description" of a head injury ("bumped his head"), followed by a lucid interval and an inability to resume normal activity ("couldn't get up in the morning").[5]

References

  1. C. W. Henderson, The Charles Ives Tunebook (Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 141.
  2. Anon, The Little Mother Goose (1912, Dodd, Mead & Company, 3rd edn., 1918), p. 169.
  3. "Audio Recordings It's raining, it's pouring", Library of Congress, retrieved 16 June 2015.
  4. C. W. Henderson, The Charles Ives Tunebook (Indiana University Press, 2008), p. 141; Library of Congress Copyright Office, Catalog of copyright entries (Library of Congress, Copyright Office, 1944), p. 1362.
  5. A. H. Kaye, "Essential Neurosurgery" 3rd Ed., (Blackwell Publishing, 2004), p. 57
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/27/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.